In an unprecedented move, the federal public ministry has filed criminal charges against 17 workers from the US companies Chevron and Transocean for an oil spill in the Campos basin, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, in November 2011. Federal prosecutors said that the 17, which include Chevron’s local boss George Buck, could face a jail sentence of up to 21 years each for presiding over a “contamination time bomb”. Chevron rejected the charges – for environmental crimes and damage to public patrimony – as “outrageous and without merit”. The case has put the wind up the entire…

The federal chamber of deputies threw another curve ball this week, by voting on 19 March to allow individual states to decide whether to permit the sale of alcohol inside football stadiums during the 2013-2014 Federations Cup and World Cup, as per a contractual demand of the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), which includes a major US beer label among its official sponsors. The restive lower house only voted in favour of the General Law of the Cup, which establishes the legal framework for the 2013-2014 tournaments, after the executive agreed to submit to the house its original text,…

YPF, the Argentine subsidiary of the Spanish oil giant Repsol, has been stripped of six concessions in three Patagonian provinces over the past week, and a further three are considering similar action. This has increased fears that the government of President Cristina Fernández is preparing either to take over the company and allow for private-public ownership, like Brazil's Petrobras, or simply re-nationalise it. The fact that YPF used to be the government’s poster-child for an Argentine company – YPF is administered by the 25% stakeholder Grupo Petersen of the Eskenazi family – that was exploring and investing in the country…